6-29-00 2:06 PM M

What has happened to my writing? Ugh. I wrote Saturday before I rode my bike to Thing’s We went across the street to the Brass Monkey to watch the De La Hoya/Mosley fight. I drank rum and pineapple juice. The waitresses were pretty. A black girl in a slinky dress came in. “Is that Johnz?!” she shrieked. “I’d recognize that red head anywhere.” It was Kadija from university. I hadn’t seen her in about ten years or so. She sat on the arm of my chair to tell me she is divorced and a securities broker. I was sitting in a high-backed leather chair. I had been telling Thing it was a chair that made you want to have girls sit in your lap. Then, girls kept sitting in my lap. First Kadija, then a leggy, boner-inspiring mocha-skinned woman whose name escapes me, and finally, Sharon, of the ample, round nalgas. Sharon gave me her card. I don’t know what kind of pheromone I was giving off. Probably just the devil playing tricks on a married chump. “I’m married,” I told Sharon.

“So am I,” she said.

Mosley won a hard, tough split decision. I drank about ten beers. Dance a little. Rode my bike home before I got myself in any trouble. Strange night. They were just flirting with me because I’m married, I guess. Rochelle was there when I got home. I made a quesadilla. She said she was worried about me. I went o bed. I woke with a hangover. My mom called and said she and Josh were coming up for a visit. We went to El Cholo. I had a screwdriver. 

My baseball game was at Yosemite Park in Eagle Rock. We lost a tough one four to two. I singled and scored, but I struck out with the tying runs on to end the game. The ump sucked. I played third well. I was exhausted when I got home. I pulled a muscle in my leg. It’s my achilles tendon or my calf. I’ve been limping around ever since. I put a cold pack on it last night, followed by a heating pad. I’ve got it wrapped in an ace bandage. I don’t think I’ll be able to play next week. What a muscle pull, anyway? I read about half of the newspaper. Called my father. He’s worried about my brother. I don’t understand monogamy.

 

6-13-00 Tu 2:12 PM

I wrote about the club in my third-person page. The next day I woke up, still drunk, and walked down Patterson to the McDonald’s and got a quarter pounder with fries and mayo, and iced tea, a coffee, and an orange juice. I brought it back to the apartment and ate. Bernice came home. She came to the game with us. We picked up our tickets at will call. There were only three tickets, so we had to buy one Standing Room Only ticket for eight dollars. Our seats were in the shade behind home plate. I drank more Buds, Coors, and Old Styles. Bob singled and scored. I walked around the stadium to the bleachers, found an ATM, and took out a hundred bucks. I can say I took a shit in a Wrigley Field crapper. Got another beer. Went to the upper deck. You can see this brilliant swath of blue on the horizon over right field that is Lake Michigan. Back at my seat,  I told Bernie the truth about married life. Mac went back to the house. Sosa homered, but the Tigers won. Bob said he’d have us to the club house if they won, but Mac never came back. Mitch and Bernie and I went to Murphy’s, one of the pubs across from the stadium. It was like New Year’s Eve. Thousands of people drank in the streets. The hardest part was pissing, which I was doing about as often as the els go by. You couldn’t get into the bathroom, so I kept staggering over to under and el rail and pissing in the weeds. It seemed like a very Chicagoan experience. I didn’t talk to hardly anyone. Bernie, and Mitch went back to look for Mac at the flat. I hung out and drank a few more beers. Took some pictures. I walked back along Waveland, past the fire station to Bernie’s. Drank beer there. A friend of Bernie’s, another stewardess named Nicole came over. I drank while the girls got ready to take us to the Hancock building. I peed on a tree in front of the Hancock building. Hundreds of people waited in line to go up to the top. An elevator opened as we walked by, though, and we slipped in. No one protested. We made friends with a couple of Swiss guys. I bought a round for us to drink while we waited to be seated. I don’t remember much except for how flat and far the city lights stretch across the dark plain.

 6-12-00 M 12:15 PM

[ticket stub Chicago Cubs vs Detroit Tigers Wrigley Field Sat Jun 3 2000 3:05 PM SRO] I was looking for the bathroom, and I went out a door in the bar into the hotel lobby next door. Mac and Bob were just coming back with the cameras. When we tried to reenter Houston's, some off-duty cop with a cop mustache, and Silent Bob (not our Bob), the dork-ass manager, told us the restaurant had just closed. "We're already in," I said. "We have a table. I was just looking for the bathroom and ended up in the hotel. These guys just went to get some cameras so we can take pictures with the rest of our party, who are still inside."

"I don't care," sez the cop in his Chicago cock accent, like you're trying to talk with your throat as open as possible. "We're closed."

We explained again, politely, the circumstances, but he was adamant and unreasonable. "You know what?" (our) Bob said, "You're rude."

"Rude? He's an asshole," my brother and I jinxed each other. 

"Just get me my bill then, so I can pay and get out of here," Bob said.

"Fuck him. Don't pay. Let's just bail."

"I'll go get everybody." 

"You're not going in there." He stood in front of me.

I pushed past him, I was energized by whiskey and how wrong he was.

"I'll have you arrested," he said.

"Kiss my ass," I told him.

At the booth, I told Bob's girl what was going on.

When I came back out, I heard the cop saying to Bob, "I know who you are."

It became clear to me then that the guy was a White Sox fan among whom Feck was notorious for his role in brawl in which he incited the fans through his taunting to shower him with beer in the bullpen.

Whatever. A limo arrived and we all piled in, having a smoke on the way to the Excalibur. We put the Lakers on the TV in the limo. When we got to the club, we got the VIP treatment at the velvet rope. "Oh, your with the Tigers," the doorman asked as I went in with the rest. "What position do you play?"
"Third base," I didn't exactly lie. 

My brother had Xtasy for the Tigers and Mitch, but decided I was the odd man out. Mitch dropped his and spent the rest of the night looking down like he might see it under the flashing colored lights on the dance floor. We mingled a bit. I didn't dance. I joked with Mitch about what a swinging stud I would be if I wasn't married, so why was he standing around like a dweeb? Pool tables and arcade games filled a floor downstairs. A bouncer at another velvet rope stood sentinel before the upstairs. As I stood there, the doorman from the outside came by and said to the bouncer, "This guy's one of the Tigers."

 

6-8-00 Th 2:57 PM

I was riding up La Brea to meet Nattaz at El Coyote when, like déjà vu,

6-9-00 F 5:46 PM

[ticket stub, Chicago Cubs vs Detroit Tigers aisle 220 row 14 seat 5 Fri Jun 2 2000 2:20 PM]

What else? Shadows play in the shape of a man’s desire. A stiff wind blew in our faces from centerfield. It was probably seventy in the sunshine and fifty in the shade. I didn’t mind it much, though. Somehow the present setting remained in the background even though I was thousands of miles from home, or because of it maybe. Mac went back to the house for jackets. I stayed in my seat and admired stray cones of sunshine falling through gaps in the A-beams of the old place, splotching a few clumps of fans with it warmth. I spilled a beer. I hollered a few “Let’s go Bob!”s Had Buds, Coors, Old Styles. The Cubs won. Rick Aguilera recorded his three-hundredth save. Bob struck out a couple times. I ate a Wrigley Pig. I bough a dog, just to say I had a dog there, but I only had a bite. We walked back to Bernie’s pad after the game. We put on the Pacers/Knicks game and drank and cleaned up a little. Mac talked to Bob on the phone. We drove Lakeshore Drive in a cab we hailed on Addison to Houston’s on State Street. I wish I had written every day while I was there. Vick picked up the check. Walter, the Tiger, was there with his wife and his girlfriend. His wife was wearing tight, shiny leather pants, which she bent over the table to show off as Walter gave her a hand whip to the ass. The wife and girlfriend bounded off to the bathroom giggling as Walter leered at us before following them. Vick’s chick is a dream. They met in junior high. Mack joked, “I always ask her how she knew he was gonna be a major leaguer.” I ordered two thick, lean pork chops and some chowder and beers and bourbons. Mack and Bob wen to get cameras at Walgreen’s down the street. I watched Bob’s brother, John, fool around with Bob’s girl all night. Apparently, it was just some harmless joke she tolerated. She said I was funny and that she like me. Then she talked about which Tigers and their wives she liked or didn’t and why or why. I got up to go to the bathroom.